"My experience with South West London & St George's Mental Health NHS Trust"

I am coming to the end of my placement and I thought I should share my experiences and express my sincere gratitude to my co-mentor, Anna for her support and the opportunities she gave me especially, her professional attitude, patience, and approachable personality.

Anna gave me amazing support and guidance in the Wandsworth older people service, creating an environment for me to learn from her and imbibe professional values and integrity required to become an effective and compassionate mental health nurse. She is patient and always available to answer my questions.

She taught me the value of building up a network of colleagues of all members of staff in all clinical areas, by treating them with respect and dignity indicating that, I will one day draw on their experiences and support when I qualify. Anna always asked me challenging questions, her intention is to always make me reflect on my practice and application of theory to practice. She also provided me with constructive feedback to help identify areas to develop and focus on. Anne never made me feel insignificant or stupid whenever I get something wrong rather, she will be patient with me and teach me in a way that increases my confidence.

I am amazed at how much my confidence has grown. Anne took the pain to provide me with emails of other clinical service areas that I can go to for outreach, this has broadened my knowledge and understanding of various mental health services than I could imagine.

I cannot recommend Anna highly enough as an effective, firm and considerate mentor. I am sure any student who has the privilege to be mentored by Anne, will always be grateful for the experience and the wealth of knowledge they will depend upon.

What will always stick with me, is Anna attitude and interaction with her patients in the community. Her compassion, communication skills in assessing patients living with dementia are just invaluable. It is something that I would not have been able to learn in lecture halls.  

Please, do give a big shout out to Anna on my behalf for her dedication in giving back to student nurses.